By Jack Stevens

“You’re not teachable!” Lately, I’ve heard that frequently. In meetings with pastors and campus leaders who have been in the ministry for almost fifty years, I’ve been repeatedly told that my understanding of salvation is “just surface level,” “overly simple,” and “unbiblical.” I’m seen as a wayward heretic, and I’ve experienced heavy criticism for my beliefs, even to the point of losing a close friend.

What view of mine elicits such a harsh response? It is that salvation is gained only by believing in Jesus for eternal life and that assurance is of the essence of saving faith. He will never break His promise of everlasting life (John 3:16). We are saved by grace through faith and apart from works (Eph 2:8-9).

My critics say that if you are really saved, you’ll change, and that if you don’t get your act together, go to church, and stay on the straight and narrow after conversion, then you never had eternal life to begin with. I’ve talked with hundreds of college students about the promise of life. I’ve met with campus ministry leaders and pastors. I have observed that belief in assurance, grounded on Jesus’ promise alone, is becoming extinct, especially on college campuses.

The Great Dechurching, by Jim Davis and Michael Graham (published in August 2023), has a lot to say about the waning of Christianity in our country. The book reports a study that found that in the past twenty-five years, forty million people have left Christianity. About twelve percent of the population of the United States has become disenchanted with the church and has largely taken the next generation with it. As a college student at a public university, I have seen this firsthand, and I believe that a large part of the reason is that there is no assurance, no life, and––especially––no grace in the church.

Some friends and I have started a ministry on our university campus. We set up a small fire outside the dorms and hand out s’mores to whoever comes walking by. Many students like to hang out and talk, so we share the message of life and give the Gospel of John to anyone who’s interested. When the weather is nice, anywhere from sixty to a hundred or more people stop by in a single night, and the friendly atmosphere on campus makes many people open to discussing Jesus.

One of the main questions I like to ask is: “Do you know for sure where you will go when you die?” In talking to hundreds of students, few have answered this question affirmatively. But the shocking thing is that most of the time, people follow their answer by saying, “Oh, I know I’m going straight to hell.” And then, often, they laugh at that idea. This flippant treatment of their eternal future deeply saddens me. In digging further, I find that these people often have a background in the church, have seen the emptiness of religion, and have walked away from it. When I asked those who said they would go to heaven what made them sure, only four people have told me they would go to heaven because they believed in Jesus for eternal life. Only four students out of hundreds I’ve spoken with have Bible-based assurance of their salvation. This is incredibly sobering.

On Tuesday nights, we often intercept kids who are coming from different campus Bible studies. I’ve talked to many who are carrying their Bibles from the group meeting. Incredibly, those from the Bible studies are the ones who object the most to the Biblical message of life! They almost always attach works after conversion to their explanation of salvation. They are involved in church and Bible study, yet they do not have assurance. They turn out to be our biggest critics and say that eternal life is not gained by simply believing in Jesus but rather by faith plus repentance.

One night, an older man approached our fire and handed out pamphlets. He turned out to be a local pastor. He was inviting students to come to his church. I was in a deep conversation with a student about how belief in Jesus is sufficient for eternal life. The pastor cut into the conversation. He immediately corrected me and said that repentance was needed in order for faith to be real. He said you must have the fruit of the Spirit and a changed life to have assurance.

He kept coming to the group to undermine our message!

Eventually, I sat down with him for lunch to discuss our differences.

I also met several times with the leader of a large campus ministry. He, too, tried to convince me that repentance and a changed life were conditions of everlasting life.

It was interesting to see the demeanor of both these ministry leaders change when I disagreed and stated the message of life. At first, both were very nice and complimented me for what I was doing on campus. But after I told them the faith-alone message, they got angry and bulldozed me for the rest of the conversation. From the Scriptures, I clearly presented why salvation is through faith alone, not contingent on works before or after conversion. Both concluded our meetings by saying that I was too young, that I lacked a proper understanding of the Scriptures and salvation, and that I was not teachable.

Because I pushed back on their narrative with evidence from the Bible, they accused me of pride and of clinging too tightly to a surface-level interpretation of God’s Word. Instead of changing their thinking to what the Bible clearly teaches regarding eternal life, they claimed that what I preach is dangerously false. This is all because I refused to add repentance, and therefore works, to the precious gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Assurance of salvation apart from works is the key ingredient to having life-filled people in life-filled churches.

Satan clearly doesn’t want this to happen, so he uses established religious people to undermine the message of life. He uses the same tactics with my little campus outreach as he did with the Judaizers who crept into Paul’s churches in Galatia (e.g., Gal 1:6-9; 3:1-4). Because assurance is essential to salvation, we must never give up and never give in to persecution from others who call themselves Christians. We must never relinquish the life-bringing message that even a child can understand and believe.

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Lord willing, Jack will graduate from the University of Idaho on May 11th. He plans to do a pastoral internship in Nags Head, NC this summer. Starting in the fall, he will be the full-time Associate Pastor at Grace Bible Church in Kamiah, Idaho, while continuing his education through GES Seminary.